Planning Ahead

Your health care provider may tell you to eat a snack at certain times of the day, most often at bedtime. This helps keep your blood sugar from getting too low at night. Other times, you may have a snack before or during exercise for the same reason. Ask your health care provider about the snacks you can have.

You will also need to ask about what snacks to avoid. You also need to know how to control your diabetes when you do snack.

Snacks for a Purpose

Your health care provider can tell you if you should snack at certain times to keep from having low blood sugar.

This will be based on your:

Diabetes treatment plan from your doctor or nurse

Expected physical activity

Lifestyle

Most often, your snacks will be easy to digest foods that have 15 - 45 grams of carbohydrates.

Snack foods that have 15 grams of carbohydrates are:

½ cup of canned fruit (without the juice or syrup)

½ banana

1 medium apple

1 cup melon balls

2 small cookies

10 potato chips (varies with size of chips)

6 jelly beans (varies with size of pieces)

Snacks for Enjoyment

Having diabetes does not mean that you must stop eating snacks. It does mean that you should know what a snack can do to your blood sugar. You also need to know what healthy snacks are. Ask you health care provider about what snacks you can eat. Also ask if you need to change your treatment (such as extra insulin shots) for snacks.

Snacks with no carbohydrates change your blood sugar the least. The healthiest snacks usually do not have many calories.

Read food labels for carbohydrates and calories. You can also use carbohydrate counting books. Over time, it will get easier for you to tell, how many carbohydrates are in foods or snacks.

Some low carbohydrate snacks, such as nuts and seeds, are high in calories. Some low carbohydrate snacks are: